


Magnificent and Wide

by finnlogan



Category: Original Work
Genre: British English, Kink Negotiation, London, M/M, Music, NaNoWriMo, Oral Sex, Polyamory, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Risk Aware Consensual Kink, Robot Sex, Robots, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-01-24 10:50:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21337027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finnlogan/pseuds/finnlogan
Summary: For Reuben, things have always been as easy as one, two, three.So he can't fall in love with someone like Felix, can he? After all, he buggers off to wherever it is he fancies and leaves Reuben with the club and his three other lovers. You can't fall in love with a guy like that, can you? ...can you?And then it turns out Felix is hiding something. He just can't figure out what.
Relationships: Also everyone in the poly relationship w Felix but theyre not like. the focus., Felix Hadaly/Reuben Clarke
Comments: 3
Kudos: 1





	1. there was always normal

**Author's Note:**

> This is my NaNoWriMo for 2019! I will try and update it as I go, but it might be uploaded here at the end of the month rather than the start.
> 
> Unbeta!d, bc its NaNoWriMo and I am Rushin' baby!!! This is a first draft, and the formatting might be janky.

Things work the way they’ve worked for years. 

The screech of his radio alarm clock, going on and on about the news and the tech advances and whatever, pulls him awake at, what, 7? It’s not important anyway, he doesn’t leave his bed then.

He lays there and breathes, and thinks, and he considers the fact that waking up at this time of the morning was probably illegal in the Utopian future where he did not live in his shitty house and have a ridiculous alarm clock that woke him up at 7 even though he had nothing to get up for.

He wrenches himself from his bed as early as he can tolerate, and he drags himself to the bathroom of his shitty two-bed flat in London. He can’t afford it, but his housemate (and longtime friend) covers most of the rent in exchange for the better room. Judith’s room was nice, anyway, so he didn’t think it was that bad of a deal. Could’ve been worse, anyway.

Hopping into the shower, he groans as the hot water hits his skin, and he digs his fingers into his hair in some attempt to ease out the knots in his brain. Who knew why those knots were there in the first place, because good god, he had nothing to complain about.

He stands under the water for a few minutes, motionless. He stares as the mirror steams up.

And suddenly, jolting, he scowls and gets to actually showering. “Come on Reuben, you’ve got to sort stuff today,” he mutters. Grabbing his shower gel, Reuben- well, he showers. It strikes him that all the people in the world that used separate products for their hair and body and face were fuckin’ silly, because god it was so convenient to just hop in and out of the shower. And-

God, that’s boring. “Reuben,” he asks himself. “When did you get so boring?”

“You’ve always been boring!” A voice collides with his warm-calm and he starts, legs jolting and nearly slipping over in the shower.

“Fuck!” he screeches, regains his balance, and then the realisation of what had just happened hits him like a tonne of precariously balanced bricks. “Judith! Fuck off, I could have died!”

Behind the door, Judith cackles.

“Ugh!” he spits, switching off the shower and hopping out. He wouldn’t put it past Judith to knock the fucking door down, so he grabs his pyjamas from the floor and rams them onto himself. He cringes as the wet material clings to his skin.

“Can I come in?” She calls through the door, and Reuben scowls.

“Absolutely not, I-”  
  
“Are you naked?” She yells.

He frowns again. “No, I’m not, wh-?!”  
.   
“What’s the problem then? I have to get to work, let me brush my teeth-”

Which is more reasonable than he was expecting, really. He walks gingerly to the door, padding soggy footsteps over the lino, and mumbles under his breath. “Ugh, fine, let me just-”

The door opens, and there’s Judith, beaming smile spread across her face.

“Oh hey, Reuben, Good morning!” She says.

He squints at her. “Morning.” He returns, deadpan.

“So, guess what,” she pushes past him to the sink, then frowns at the floor, lifting up her foot and inspecting the bottom of her sock. “Why is the floor wet?”

“Judes,” He says, seriously, planting his hand on the back of his neck, and stepping a little further out into the hallway. “I don’t want to be a melt, but please don’t surprise me in the shower light that.”

She pauses, seems to consider it, and then nods. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. Thought it’d be funny and didn’t think! Dick move on my part. Won’t, uh. Won’t do it again.”

He nods at her and smiles, turning around to head back to his cosy room where nobody except his alarm clock would shout at him-

“Oh! Speaking of making up for-! Things!” She calls at him, and by the time he turns around, her mouth is already filled with toothpaste and a toothbrush. “Mm- ogh, one second-” She garbles, then spits out.

He winces as toothpaste tracks down her chin.

“Sexy,” he comments, gesturing to her chin. “Really sexy.”

“Ha, ha,” responds Judith, splashing her face with water. “It’s funny, you see, because you were being sarcastic and have nothing interesting to contribute to- oh! Wait no I actually have something important to tell you,” she says, brightly, body visibly perking up. She glances down at her watch and deflates a little bit. “I only have 40 seconds to tell you this. Apparently. Is my watch the right time?”

He glances at it and then at his phone, pulling it from his pyjama pocket. “Yeah, seems- maybe a couple of seconds slow?”

“Oh,” she says. “Well, I guess I’ll have to say it in like 5 seconds then. So! I got you a band, or- or just a bloke, really, for this weekend, you’ll like him, his name is Felix Hadaly and he’s on Bandcamp, and he’s really very good and also you’ll fancy him-” She spills out the words at breakneck speed, dashing past him and shoving her shoes on halfway down the hall. “He’ll be at the Hope and Ruin at 8, bye!”

And then the door slams and she’s gone.

Well, then.

He does what any sensible human would do. He googles this guy immediately.

Or rather, he changes out of his soggy pyjamas into some actual adult clothes, and then he googles the guy. Nothing worse than staying in wet clothes, he thinks to say, then winces when he realises he’s echoing his mother.

Settling back onto his bed and tapping at his laptop, Reuben closes the pop-up that covers his screen about ‘hot sexy singles in your area’, and then he closes another one about some kind of weird robot conspiracy theory website, and then he closes another one that was also probably about the aforementioned sexy singles.  
  
He laughs at himself, and takes a moment to delete his history, then furrows his brow. Once he figures out how to spell ‘Hadaly’, Judith’s buddy is the first person to pop up.

Felix Hadaly, reads the Bandcamp. The photo is of a man clutching a guitar, head pointed off to the side. Long-ish, floppy hair, the kind of hair that looked the exact length where it was impossible to do anything with. A beard. Handsome, though he looked a little bit like he should be writing a screenplay in a cafe in Shoreditch, but definitely handsome. Definitely looked like the kind of bloke who’d wear a yellow beanie to his university lectures. Handsome, though. Handsome.

The music is good, but maybe not exactly what he’d hoped for. This guy seems to write songs for big venues, lots of simple guitars and folksy lyrics backed up in refrains and choruses by big band noises. Lots of random harps chucked in. Clearly using a synthesiser, which wasn’t a problem, per se, but it seemed very much like Hadaly’s thing was the ‘just a simple man with his guitar’ thing. The performed songs might sound very different from the professionally polished ones. He hums under his breath. He scours Spotify for a second and peeks at Hadaly’s biography: just a few flower emojis, which didn’t give him much to go on. 

Reuben leans back. “Huh,” he mumbles. Hard to know whether he was meant to provide equipment, really. Drummers sometimes couldn’t get their stuff sorted on such short notice, so maybe…? Maybe he’d have to sort one, maybe he could borrow a kit from the lads down at the venue and have a go, but maybe he didn’t need to even bother. Maybe this guy was one of those- like a loop pedal kind of guy. Maybe he didn’t need a drummer. Maybe he didn’t need percussion. He shrugs it off. If he’d needed to sort a kit, then Judith would’ve told him. Probably.

“Ugh,” he mumbles. This Felix guy could figure it out himself, anyway. Felix looked like a big boy. A bit wistful in his photos, sure, but that was the aesthetic. No smiling for anyone with a guitar, that was the rule.

Or something.

Reuben suddenly feels like he didn’t get enough sleep last night, or the night before. Sighing, he grabs at the TV remote and feels it faintly sticky in his fingers. He makes a face at it but presses the button to switch the TV to the news anyway. It had been his mum’s, the TV, but she’d bought one of those new 4D hologram screens that the tabloids went rabid over, so she didn’t need it anymore. He pats at it. Worked fine, looked fine, showed the TV in as many dimensions as he wanted to see it, so it was all good. 

He wasn’t a technophobe, not really. The new technology was expensive. He wasn’t anti-technology, he was just poor. The thought is fleeting, though, because the presenter that pops up on the screen is talking about the robotics ‘crisis’, which Reuben has absolutely no time for, so he switches it off. It unsettles him; the whole technology debate was not something he wanted to be dealing with, really. Wasn’t his business, not really. It was a political thing, not a personal one.

Standing again, he stretches, wrenching his joints every which way to try and offset the weird apprehension he was suddenly feeling. He’d been really into politics when he was younger, at A-Level and whatever. He’d wanted to really… really change the world.

“Funny how things change,” He murmurs, stepping towards the tiny window of his bedroom. “Funny.”

He stares out onto the streets of the city and leans back onto his hips. The city outside is grey, and suddenly, Reuben really wants a cigarette. 

***

Reuben’s at the bar by 8, just like Judith had told him. Reuben was usually on time, though since Judith always arrived at places 15 minutes early, he may as well have been late. He spots her across the crowded room and slips his way through the crowd to get to her seat by the bar.

He folds roughly into the seat, then makes a face at Judith. “Is Hadaly not here yet?”

“No,” she says, smiling and sipping at her drink. It’s probably a rum and coke. “He’s not, though I am not surprised in the slightest by that. He’s always late.” 

“Mm,” agrees Reuben, absent-mindedly as he tries to grab the attention of the bartender. “Hey, how doyou know this guy anyway?” he glances at her only to have the bartender step over. “Oh! Hello mate!”

It’s Mark, just with a new haircut and a weird hat on. He’d known Mark for years, since way back when he’d started organising events for The Hope, and they weren’t mates, but they also weren’t not mates. Mark was a nice enough bloke, though, just that they only ever seemed to speak when he was grabbing a pint with Judith.

“Oh hello, Reuben!” He says, grinning widely as he braces himself on the bar. “How’s things?”

“You know man, alright! And what about you?”

“Pretty good, pretty good, what can I get you?”

“Ah, can I get a pint of the Dark Star please, buddy? Yeah, the-” Reuben points, leaning over the bar. “The original one, yeah, not the- yeah-”

And they carry on, just normal people in a bar. Normal people, normal friends, normal (but very good) beer, and-

And the thing is, it’s all very normal. It almost singes him with how normal it is, the buzz of the bar behind him, and it kicks his teeth out when he thinks about it later. The kind of moment that later would seem to him like the dark before the dawn, or like the split-second of watching someone whack a leg before the knee-jerk reflex.

He drinks his beer, chats with Judith, and it’s normal.

“So, how did you meet Felix?”

“Mm,” Judith mumbles, swallowing a gulp of her drink. “Oh, we met in Amsterdam. He’ll bring it up, probably,” and when Reuben raises an eyebrow at that, she laughs. “He’s like that. You’ll see. Man’s a walking anecdote.”

Reuben opens his mouth to speak, and then he walks in.

It’s Felix. He can only assume this man was Felix Hadaly, because there’s the floppy hair and the beard, but-

God god. Judith had said he’d fancy him but he hadn’t expected this.

His shirt- it’s red, floral, and rumpled- is unbuttoned down to his mid-chest. He’s wearing black skinny jeans and those long, shiny, pointy shoes that people cooler than Reuben sometimes wore. His hands are jammed into his pockets but his posture is open, easy. Like it’s the simplest thing in the world to be here, right now, dodging his way through the busy bar. People seem to get out of his way, too, as if they know.

What exactly it is that they know, Reuben’s not sure. But Felix walks in with a smile on his face as he slides over to where they’re both sitting and Reuben thinks, oh fuck.

With a sinking feeling, the kind of thing that only happens in movies, Reuben comes to a short, sharp, stop of realisation. Actually, he comes to a few realisations, and they bump into him like a car at a fairground.

Things were about to change, is the first one. That much seems fairly obvious to him. Another was that yes, he was still not straight. That is also reasonably obvious to him, though he’d been beginning to doubt that he had it in him to even be attracted to anyone. That leads him to the third realisation, which was that Judith was right, and that it would take a pretty bad conversation to upset the fact that yes, yep, oh 100%, Reuben fancied this guy.

The thought hits him again, but gentler this time. Judith was right. He glances over at her, and she’s staring at him with a huge smug smile wiped all over her face.

He has just enough time to elbow her gently before Felix arrives. 

And there he is, the man himself.

“Hi,” he says, warmly. “I’m Felix.” His voice isn’t quite what Reuben had expected based on his singing, but it’s pretty close: he sounds like something deep-seated, like something that has been singing out every day for his whole life. His voice sounds like the grooves in a musicians fingers, or the whorls at those fingertips, or the way different birds called in the rainforest with the absolute surety that that was exactly what they should be doing. It also sounds- vibratory. Faintly mechanised, almost, and the boiler he’d had in his short-lived student house springs to mind in the way it had rattled at its metal confines. 

And now he’s close up, he can see… Felix’s skin is perfect, and already, his brain is hurling him through ridiculous romantic thoughts that will go absolutely nowhere if he doesn’t reply to Felix right this fucking second-

“Hello,” he returns, blandly. And then blinks, shifts back into himself, and says, “Oh balls, that’s a lacklustre start. Let me try that again, okay?”

Felix, when they make eye contact, is grinning from ear to ear. “Sure,” he responds, smoothly. “Would you like me to walk across the bar again, or are you…?”

“Oh, no, no,” Reuben says, trying desperately to force that same smoothness into his laughing splutter, “If you just say ‘hi’, again, I’m sure we can work things out.”

And to his credit, Felix smiles again and extends a hand, even as beside him Judith makes an ugly noise. “Hi,” he says, and when Reuben takes the offered handshake there’s a moment where he absolutely expects Felix to whisk him up off the bar stool. 

That doesn’t happen though, and instead, Reuben makes a noise he hopes comes across as comfortable, and says, “Hi. My name’s Reuben, I’m the event organiser guy that Judith’s told you about and I gotta say I am in awe of your shirt,” and Felix laughs, and god dammit, his laugh is like-

He’s very aware, suddenly, that his internal monologue has gotten a lot more romantic with Felix around. He doesn’t prod at that thought and lets the romance sit with him anyway, and Jesus Christ, that man’s laugh. It strikes him in the gut, mainly because it is so warm it almost seems designed that way, like some god had sat down with Felix in mind and said, ‘You know what lads, let’s make this one really, really, really hot.’ It’s a deep laugh, sounds like it comes from his tummy. Like he means it.

“Thanks, Reuben, my absolute new best friend. Judith, how come you never compliment my shirts?”

Judith grins and stands up. “It’s because I haven’t seen you in well over a year.” They hug, and Felix makes a noise in the back of his throat as they release each other that suggests that it really had been well over a year.

“You want a drink?” Reuben offers, and smiles as Felix pulls up a chair in the middle of them both.

“Ooh!” He says, crossing his long legs over one another. Reuben wasn’t a short dude, but he was reasonably well proportioned. Felix, on the other hand, was essentially 90% leg.”Depends, I s’pose. What are you both having?”

“Beer,” Reuben says, raising his glass. “This one is Dark Star, which is an excellent brewery sort of near Brighton-ish-”

“Oh, I see. You’re a craft beer boy,” Felix laughs. 

Reuben raises an eyebrow. “Should I not be?”

Felix grins back. “Absolutely not, it’s always impressive when people know about stuff like that, stuff they love. I gotta say though, I am not a beer fan, myself,” he swings his gaze towards Judith, who appears to be repressing a laugh. “And you, Judes? What’ve you got?”

“I’ve got a rum and coke, and it’s not great. Would recommend the gin, here, though. They do an amazing gin and elderflower- thing. I’m not sure-”

“Ah, yeah,” Felix smiles knowingly, “The elderflower thing, well known in these parts for being the vaguest nice drink this side of the Atlantic-”

“Alright Felix, let me just-” Judith turns her head towards the bar, feet swinging around the tool. “Mark?” She calls, and he appears as if by magic. “What’s the weird elderflower-gin-thing you always give me when-”

“Oh, that?” Mark says, distracted, half his body still pointed towards another customer further up the bar, “I dunno man, it’s just elderflower cordial and gin, isn’t it? Doesn’t have a fancy name-”

“I’ll have one of those, please!”

“Mm,” Mark mumbles, handing the other patron their change. “Sure, coming up in just a tick,” and then he disappears to the other end of the bar again.

“See,” Judith says. “Doesn’t have a name. Doesn’t need one."

“Sure,” Felix says, smiling toothily. “Anyway Judes, how’ve you been?”

She smiles at him. Reuben smiles a little bit too, at the corner of his mouth. “Pretty good, Felix, thanks for asking. Currently living with this twat,” she gestures to Reuben and laughs.

“Alright, Judith, I’m hurt,” Reuben jokes, and she flashes him a wide smile.

“So you should be. This guy’s a nightmare to live with, you know, he works for three venues and still finds the time to be bored-”

“At least I’m not boring!” He grumbles, smile still sitting comfortably on his face.

“Seems like you two are good friends,” Felix says, and he’s smiling, too, leaning forward as Mark pushes the drink across the counter. When Judith quickly nips her card over the reader, he makes noise of protest and groans. “Come on Judith, what kind of a first impression is that for your friend? Makin’ it seem like I can’t afford drinks-”

Judith snorts. “Alright Felix, we all know you’re a starving artist-”

Felix blinks and then throws a look of comedic horror onto his face, whipping his hand back to his forehead and throwing out his back. “Oh, Judith,” He cries, “Thank you, for your kindly donation, for I and my three partners in this extremely expensive city would simply not be able to bring food into our inner city apartment were it not for your tremendous charity-”

“Yeah, yeah,” she chastises, as Reuben lets out a startled laugh. He was melodramatic, then, this guy. In a fun way.

And then he lets out another startled noise when he realises that Felix had said ‘three partners’, and that that part, at least, hadn’t seemed to be a joke.

Judith continues, “If it weren’t for me, you and your polyamorous whatever definitely would’ve had less fun in Amsterdam-”

“Oh, come on, Judes, Amsterdam was a fluke. We usually always have a place to stay, at least! And that was different, anyway, because you said, ‘Oh Felix, I’d love if it you’d stay with us and help pay the rent on the apartment,’ which is a bit different from ‘Oh Felix, let me pay for your drinks in front of Reuben so that I can assert my power over you, a delicate flower of a twink, and-’”

She’s the one that lets out the startled laugh, that time. “Alright, alright,” she huffs, “Fine, I admit it! It was all to do with my feminist wiles, and nothing to do with the fact that the card reader was there and you were too busy sizing up my best friend to notice.”

Felix smiles widely, glancing from Reuben to Judith and back again, before landing his gaze on Judith. “You’d really get on with Sasha, you know.”

“Sasha?” Reuben asks, mainly because he could feel the conversation slipping towards excluding him completely. Even if he didn’t fancy the shit out of this guy, he still would’ve been indignant about that. “Who’s that?”

Felix turns a little, points his body towards Reuben. “Oh, Sasha? Only the best partner ever. Uh,” he stops, suddenly, at looks a little sheepish. “Don’t, uh. Tell Rob or Maria I said that, when you meet them,” he mumbles, nodding at Reuben. “You’d like her, too, I would guess. She’s very likeable. Not quite my type, but, you know how it is.”

“Your type?” Reuben asks, and out of the corner of his eye he notices Judith roll her eyes. “What’s your type?”

Felix smiles again. Smiley guy, Reuben notes, very smiley. Nice smile, too. Toothy. “My type? That is a question.” He takes a sip of his drink, and then blinks down at it. “This is good actually Judith, consider my faith restored! Anyway,” Felix turns his gaze (and, Reuben is pleased to note, his body) back to Reuben, and puts a hand to his chin. “Well! I suppose it depends, really, because I think every attraction is different for me. Even within a gender, or a body type. It’s the personality, isn’t it? You have to have a connection with someone, learn how to heal them and be healed by them and…”

And ‘whoo baby’, something in Reuben’s internal monologue says. ‘We’ve got ourselves a winner, ding-ding-ding!’ It shrieks. ‘Hot and emotionally available! We’ve done it folks, we’ve hit the jackpot-’

Felix, suddenly, bites his lips. “That- probably wasn’t the answer you wanted, was it? Shall we start that again?”

(Judith, literally less than a foot away, shakes her head.)

“Would you like me to start the conversation again, or…?” Reuben says, grinning. When Felix nods, now biting back his grin, Reuben pauses a second, and asks again. “Your type, then?”

“Oh,” he says, smile wiped from his face. “I like folks warm, and I like them brunette, and I like them brown-eyed, and I like them-”

Reuben feels heat in his face and- 

“Alright, alright,” interrupts Judith. “That’s quite enough. Stop your flirting or I will be forced to leave and go home, and then if you guys come home and fuck in his bedroom, I absolutely will disturb you and you won’t like it.”

Reuben looks at Felix, then at Judith. “Not until the second date, Judith, you know me-”

Felix laughs, and when Reuben looks at him, questioning, he says, “You don’t know me, though, do you, darling?”

And then everything does a weird turn, where the whole universe drags down to this pinpoint of a hipster bar in London, and where every eye in the cosmos takes a second to look down at them, and think, ‘Jesus christ, this guy’s smitten.’

And outside of that weird pinpoint moment, Felix says, “Honestly Judith, it’s like you never told him anything about me! And you certainly never told me about him, which is frankly some kind of crime, and-”

Reuben moves his hand to Felix’s wrist.

“Do you fancy a cigarette?” He says, without thinking. Without pausing for breath. Without the thought even hitting his brain.

Felix laughs. “Oh yes.”

(In the far, far, far distance, beyond the pinpoint moment, Judith groans, ‘Oh christ,’ and she buries her head in her hands. ‘I should’ve known this would happen-’

And then it doesn’t matter because Felix and Reuben have left, and she’s sitting alone in a crowded bar with three drinks.)

***


	2. Valkyrie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They stand outside the pub and talk. Sometimes things were as easy as that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heylo! We're bad at it with some unbeta!d work, so do lmk what you think/if you spot anything off!

Reuben feels no different when they step outside, which surprises him because he’d _kind _of hoped that the crash of cooler air would get rid of the warmth in his tummy. Instead, he looks at Felix, and Felix looks at him.

He glances around at the smokers around him and then looks at the paving slabs beneath, and then he looks up again. Felix, as he’d expected, is smiling, though the smile is little and curled up at the corners.

“Do you smoke?” Reuben asks, patting his pockets even though he _knows _that even if there were cigarettes in them, which there weren’t, he probably shouldn’t be smoking anyway.

Felix stretches his arms behind him, yawning, and then rests back on his hips. He makes a soft noise. “Nope, not really. Once or twice, back when I was in Germany. But not now, no. You know not many people smoke over here?”

Reuben grimaces. “Yeah, I know. Fuckin’ nightmare to grab a cig off anyone these days.” He pats at his pockets a few more times, then crosses his arms.

“So you _do_ smoke, then.” Felix says, glancing in the same direction as Reuben is looking and then glancing back. “You didn’t strike me as a smoker.”

“Not- well. I’m not a smoker, not like- I don’t smoke, not really. Just the occasional stress cigarette, you know? Keeps your hands busy, I suppose.”

Felix tilts his head. His hair falls across his face, and he pushes it back. “Fair enough,” he says. “Makes sense. And that’s your- vice, is it? That’s what you do to unwind?”

“Ha!” The laugh is startled out him. “What a way to phrase it. Yeah, smoking is the eighth deadly sin, actually.”

Felix startles out a laugh, too. They blink at each other.

“Man,” Felix says. “If smoking is your biggest sin you must be, uh. Pretty straight edge.”

Reuben shrugs, grinning. “Hardly. I just don’t tell on the first date.”

“Oh!” Felix returns, crooked mouth making a crooked expression on his awful, handsome face. “This is a date?”

Reuben laughs as his gut flips. “See, I knew you were forward. Asking the _real _questions, aren’t you?” And then, when Felix grins widely and looks off into the street, Reuben makes a noise in the back of his throat before he can stop himself.

(Man’s got a beautiful neck. He-

God, he hopes there were no mind readers in the immediate vicinity. That was not the smartest thing he’d ever thought.)

Felix looks back over and Reuben does his best to pass it off as a cough. “And you, Felix? Are _you _straight edge?”

Felix looks taken aback and makes a thoughtful noise. “I suppose it depends on your definition. Drinks and drugs aren’t really my thing.”

“Mm,” Reuben nods, as if in understanding, or as if drink and drugs weren’t _totally_ his vice. “So what is your thing?”

Felix smiles and for a moment, a fleeting second, it looks like his canines are sharper than they should be. “Oh, Reuben. I have 3 partners. I’m sure you can guess.”

Reuben’s face, for some wretched fucking reason, chooses precisely that moment to light up. He can feel himself flush, _feels _himself turn to beetroot. He shakes himself a little, and pats his pockets again. Maybe, if he was lucky, there was a cig stuck deep, deep down in his front pockets-

(He’s reminded, somehow, of Judith’s jeans pockets: silly, tiny pockets, did nothing, held nothing, didn’t even _look _good-)

“Hm. So. You’re stressed now?” Felix’s voice chops through his distracted thoughts process.

“What?”

“You said you needed to smoke when you got stressed,” he says, and tilts his head again. “Are you stressed now?”

“Stressed is the wrong word. I’d say… engaged. Sometimes when I think too hard I need one, you know?”

He laughs, quietly. The sound of the street seems to fade to nothing, and Reuben inhales the smoke from the others, instead. It’s not calming, but at least it’s familiar. “Thinking too hard?” Repeats Felix. “And here I was thinking you’d asked me out here so we could get off.”

Reuben feels his beetroot face get even _redder. _“Hm,” he says, trying for cool. “I suppose whether we did or not would depend. I don’t usually kiss people on first-” and Felix steps closer to him- “On first,” he repeats, and Felix is really up in his personal space now- “On first… meeting…”

His mouth falls open as if he was some sloppy fuckin’ teenager getting hit on for the first time. He bites his tongue between his teeth and makes extremely deliberate eye contact.

Felix is his height. They are the _same_ height. But, right now, with Reuben bending backwards ever so slightly, Felix could be 10 feet tall. His pointy shoes are planted, one between his legs and one to his left. In a different universe, Felix would be a snake, coiling his way around Reuben’s body and _s-q-u-e-e-z-i-n-g._

In a different universe, where he’s a little mammal, slick-tight with scales all around him, Felix-the-snake would be terrifying.

In a different universe, the little mammal is choked to death by the robotic muscles of a huge python, peristalsis wracking him with undulations of scaley flesh and-

He blinks. It wasn’t a different universe. It was _this_ one. The one where Felix’s leg is between his legs, the one where he was breathing shallowly and not in a bad way, the one where Reuben can breathe in Felix’s breath and see his weirdly perfect, exactly designed, skin.

Felix smiles, sharply. “You’d get off with someone in a club, though, wouldn’t you? Even if you’d never met them before?”

His breath is measured in a way Reuben cannot _imagine._ It looks like Felix is _vibrating,_ just a little, in the way his eyes flick from Reuben’s mouth to back up again.

“I wouldn’t, actually,” breathes Reuben. And he- He puts a hand onto Felix’s chest and watches as he laughs. His chest is _firm,_ like. Really firm.

He feels like a rock.

“You wouldn’t?” Felix murmurs back. Their heads are so _close_ to each other, breath on breath. “Ah, that’s a shame.”

Reuben decides right then. He decides because Felix hadn’t pulled away, but he also hadn’t jumped in. He hadn’t forced anything.

“Always time to try something new though,” he murmurs, putting his hand up to Felix’s face, “Isn’t there?”

And then they’re kissing.

Tongue on tongue, skin on skin, Reuben wraps his hands into Felix’s hair and makes a soft noise in the back of his throat. Felix seems to shiver when Rueben’s fingers pull a little tight against his floppy hair, and somehow, before they’ve even really _started,_ Felix is looking dishevelled, rough, _beautiful,_ and Reuben makes _another_ noise and Felix laughs.

“Hot,” he murmurs, and plants his hands on Reuben’s hips.

As if invited, Rueben grins toothily and their teeth clack together. He leans forward, pushing himself into Felix’s space. He realises suddenly how far Felix had been into _his_ space, how far back he’d bent to give Felix easy access-

“_Hot,_” Reuben replies, swirling his tongue against Felix’s the moment their mouths are on each other again, and holy _shit_, that is _hot_-

It almost feels like a furnace. It feels like standing in front of a radiator on a freezing day, the gentleness of warming up slowly and the sharp flash of pain when bare skin touched metal. It feels fantastic_,_ and Rueben pants out with his hand still grabbing at Felix’s hair.

He makes another soft noise, and when-

“Oi oi!” comes a shriek.

Oh.

He’s jolted out of the extremely sexy moment he’d been having. He blinks, steps back, and looks in the direction of the door.

Fucking _Judith._

“Hello boys, how are we doing, pretty good? I’m doing pretty good too, or I _was_ before I was _abandoned_ for like a _full twenty minutes_ when you _said_ you were going out for a fuckin’ _cigarette!_”

There’s a smattering of laughter from the smokers, but all of them pretend they’re not looking, so Reuben pretends they’re not looking either. He blinks again to clear the blurriness from his eyes and turns to face her properly.

He sticks his hand behind his head and tries his best to look nonchalant. “Oh, uh. Sorry, Judith. Didn’t mean to be gone so- wait, 20 minutes?”

Judith raises her eyebrows.

Immediately he feels little sheepish because it was _Judith,_ who might as well have been the greek god of timekeeping for anything but work, but he presses on anyway. “We- we can’t have been 20 minutes, right?”

He shoots a look at Felix, who is hiding his mouth behind a hand. He notices that Felix’s hands are _broad._

Judith clocks the look and crosses her arms, frowning in a way that said Reuben was in _trouble. “You were 25!”_

“Can’t- can’t have been. Is your watch still wrong?”

“Reuben Clarke, this is a fascinating hill to want to die on.”

Felix, next to him, stifles a laugh.

“Come on, Felix,” Judith says. “It’s been at _least_ 20…” she grabs her phone from her back pocket and glances at it. “It’s been _26 _minutes now, and I am _not_ happy.”

Felix holds up his hands, not bothering to hide his smile anymore. “That’s justified,” he says, though he doesn’t sound the slightest bit apologetic. “Your friend is a good kisser, though! So it’s not all bad!” He announces, brightly.

Judith’s face drops from a sort of reasonable frown into a frown where her eyebrows may as well have been on the floor.“Honestly, I am _not _surprised this happened, I am surprised that after nearly half an hour neither of you thought to send me a text saying you were _leaving-_”

“Oh,” Reuben interrupts. “We weren’t going to leave!”

Judith blinks at him, and Felix blinks at him.

Clearly, he’s missed a memo at some point.

“We weren’t?” Felix asks.

“Reuben…” Judith mutters, and very rapidly, Reuben starts to feel a little bit like a little gazelle on a David Attenborough programme. Like he was about to get eaten by a great big cat. Like he was either going to get away by the skin of his teeth or die an excruciating horrible death. She shifts tone, and talks as if she’s speaking to an uncooperative teenager. “Remember what we talked about? Just because you’re bored doesn’t mean you should be boring-”

“Oh god,” he mumbles, dragging his fingers through his hair. He tries to grab onto his skull but fails, because unlike Felix, his hair was short and very much not the luscious locks he’d just been digging his fingers through.

“He doesn’t seem boring,” Felix tries, which Reuben would probably appreciate if it weren’t for the fact that kissing a near-stranger outside a pub was perhaps the most adventurous thing he’d done since university. “He seems pretty-”

“Oh, no,” Judith starts. “Felix-”

“Alright, alright! That’s quite enough of the attacks on me, _thank_ you, I am still here and present in this conversation, please and _thank you,_” He splutters out, stepping quickly between Felix and Judith. “Not boring, thank you, just working a job I’m bored of and currently living with someone who insists on calling me boring every 2 minutes-”

“I didn’t call you boring!” She protests. “I said you _shouldn’t_ be boring-”

“It was _implied,_” he hisses.

Silence falls for a few seconds, or it seems to, anyway. There’s still the clamour of people gathered and the soft click of people vaping, and the susurrus of the cars driving past.

But when Felix speaks, it feels like the breaking of an awkward silence anyway.He steps around Reuben, standing between them again.

“Okay! Okay,I see I have caused _many_ issues, so let’s- let’s say we talk business?”

Judith blinks. “Business?” Reuben bites his lips, holding back laughter.

“You-” Felix looks from Reuben to Judith and back again, “This was about a _gig,_ wasn’t it?”

“Oh!” Judith makes a small embarrassed noise. “Yeah.”

Felix adjusts his shirt, pulling it a little closer to him. Reuben gets the idea that had Felix been wearing it actually buttoned up, he would’ve pulled at the neckline.

Reuben feels no different when they step inside, but the crash of warmer air does nothing to distract from the heat in his gut.

***

They don’t sleep together that night. Reuben had been right. It’d be the second date, probably.

Probably? He scoffs at himself. There was no way he’d _not_ fuck that man.

It’s like-

Reuben liked things _romantic._ He liked them one-step-two-step and straightforward. He liked them processual, he liked it when things just worked. He liked it _soft._

But he also liked it when things surprised him. He liked that sharp shock of warmth to his face and he liked-

He doesn’t really want to admit it to anyone, let alone himself, but he’s very aware of it all of a sudden. He liked not being _bored._

It’s fairly simple to him: He’d chosen to go to university, a fair number of years ago now. And that was probably the last thing he chose. He fell into event management, he fell into doing his three venues, he fell into setting his alarm so early every day. He falls into stuff. That’s how he works. There’s never anything _bigger._ It’s little things, constituent parts building to a greater whole. There are no grand gestures, not a single process that lights him up. Instead, it’s trickles of life.

He sighs and turns over in his bed.

Is that fair? He lives with a housemate that he loves, that he’s known for _years,_ and stays cheaply and lives- well, he lives okay. He’s no king, but he’s also not totally destitute. He could probably afford to eat out a little more, could probably afford to worry less. He could probably afford to do more fun stuff. But he still had a home, still had his mates. Had a family.

Capitalism wanted him _dead,_ but it wanted a lot of people dead, so that was that. Though, he thinks, it didn’t seem to want Felix dead. For a travelling musician, he seemed like he knew how to make things _work_ for himself. As if it were that easy. As if anything were ever that easy.

He gets the distinct feeling that Felix had not had a similar upbringing to him. Reuben had grown up in a shitty house in the outskirts of London, and his parents had moved around a lot. He loved his parents, and there had never been any problems when he’d come out, but- they hadn’t had a lot. When he’d done his disastrous year at university, there hadn’t really been anything they could do to help. Student loan only got you so far.

Felix, on the other hand, he was a university boy, despite the fact that he’d _also_ dropped out. Reuben had done management, to try and get a better job, and Felix had done Philosophy, Politics and Economics. Or he had according to his social media, anyway. There wasn’t anything wrong with that, but Reuben already knows that there was absolutely no chance that was a career-driven move. He’d done it because it _looked_ good.

He shrugs to himself, in a dark room in the middle of London. Different opportunities, he supposed. Different ways of living. Besides, Felix was a _musician._ Even though Reuben was paying him well, the industry-standard wasn’t exactly good money. And he had 3 partners, too, so they were probably all supporting each other.

Polyamory wasn’t a thing he’d ever considered before this moment. If he was- If he wanted to try and date Felix, who was simultaneously being dated by 3 other people, how would that even work? Would they need a synced calendar or something? Would they need to book time off?

He blinks and scowls. “Kind of ahead of yourself, there, Clarke,” he mumbles. “Maybe have a _date_ first, yeah?”

He turns over and goes back to sleep, and it seems like within seconds the radio is screeching about technology again.

“Oh my _god,_” he growls at it. He slaps at the top of it to try and get it to shut up, but it blares on about the robot thing anyway. Something, something, terrorist threat, something, something, robots in entertainment, something, something, robots. God, the media really had-

“_Breaking news, according to a Guardian whistleblower, the designer of the SC-series robot, popular in the entertainment industry, has confirmed that many were released into the public and-”_

“Oh god, shut _up_.” It doesn’t, so he slaps at it some more, only to find the button has cracked from the sheer number of times he’s whacked at it in the morning.

In the end, he reaches down and unplugs the damn thing. Evil. How dare it shout at him.

But then it clicks, the reason it was _so_ weird. Weirder than usual anyway. His alarm was usually set for 7, or thereabouts.

It’s 4 am.

...Huh.

Reuben turns over and goes back to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me on twitter n tumblr at verulamfic and on the NaNoWriMo system as willgracegoestospace!
> 
> If you spot anything off please let me know! Otherwise I'd literally love to hear what everyone think of this, consider shooting me a comment if you read!
> 
> MUCH LOVE!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't finish Nano this year, but I have this chapter to add! I feel like I'll be coming back to this. c:

“Are you joking?” Reuben laughs.

“No, no! I’m completely serious-”

“Honestly? You’d buy an espresso and put _syrup_ in it?”

“Oh_ yes_, darling. In fact, I am going to do it right now-” and he steps forward towards the counter, adjusting his shirt. “Hi,” he smiles at the barista, who looks _infinitely_ tired, but friendly. Reuben still doesn’t understand how people were able to _do_ that. How they could crack a smile on zero sleep. Still, though, when Felix grins at them, they grin back.

And Felix wasn’t joking. He orders an espresso with a hazelnut shot. That, apparently, is just the way it is.

He puts his card over the reader before Reuben even has the chance to _offer_ to cover it, and then steps away after he pays, so Reuben steps forward. _Immediately,_ Felix steps back again and crashes into him. Quickly, without thinking, Reuben grabs Felix by his armpits. Jesus, the man is _heavy._

“Wh_oops,_” he says, leaning onto Reuben between his slightly bewildered arms.

The barista laughs, “Are you okay?”

And Felix, making no attempt to stand up properly, smiles at them from between Reuben’s arms. When Reuben looks down, he’s grinning like a cat, mouth spread wide across his face. “Oh yes,” he says, and Reuben is suddenly really glad that the muscle from when he used to drum hasn’t disappeared _completely. _ He rolls his eyes, and he smiles despite himself. “Come on, Felix, _up_ you get-” And when he gently yanks Felix upwards, he is once again struck by how _heavy_ he was. It shocks him again because good lord, he was _not_ a large guy, but he weighed a _tonne._

Which wasn’t a problem for Reuben like, theoretically. It was just that he’d cancelled his gym membership because he couldn’t afford it, and had been using weights at home. Apparently, that had not been a good call, and he feels sweat bead on his forehead, just a little.

Felix seems to finally notice the shake in his muscle, and stands up. Which is when he notices that Felix was _taller_ than him, which he hadn’t been before.

And he glances down, and there- there they were. Felix was wearing _heels_, little boot things with a good 3-inch heel and a snakeskin finish, and boy, that three inches? It changes _everything._

(It doesn’t, really. But the height difference sends all kinds of emotion swirling around his tummy. Jesus, he thinks, that’s hot.)

He shakes himself as he watches Felix adjust himself again, and then clear his throat: “So before _that_ whole thing, I was gonna ask- do you bring the drinks over? Or do-”

“Oh!” The barista smiles. Even in their sleep-deprived state, they’d _clearly_ enjoyed the show: the laugh hasn’t quite cleared from their face yet. “Oh, we bring it over, don’t worry!”

“Brilliant, thank you,” and he claps Reuben on the shoulder and points over to a seat. “I’ll be over there,” he mouths, and then, effortlessly, winds his way around the tables to one in the window.

...Reuben doesn’t really know what to say then, because god _damn_. Heels, apparently. Heels were a thing.

“And what can I get for you, sir?” He’d jolted out of his line of thought by the barista, and he physically jumps. “Oh! Oh god, sorry, are you okay?”

Reuben laughs. “Yes, yes, sorry for not paying attention! Can I get a small mocha? No cream or anything, thanks. Cheers,” he says, placing his card on the reader and grinning.

The barista smiles at him, in a way that seems almost knowing. “Thank you, sir, we’ll bring the drink over in a minute. Have a good day!”

“Thank you,” he says, “You too!”

And he’s struck again by this sense of normality. It grabs at him, how normal it feels.

Felix, across the room, taps at his phone with his fingers and at the floor with his heels.

He plods his way over to Felix and settles heavily into the chair.

“What’d you get?” Felix asks, putting his phone down and bracing his face on his hands. “Something _manly,_ I assume, since syrups aren’t allowed-”

“What? Of _course_ syrups are allowed. I got a mocha. A small one.”

Felix gives him a baffled look. “Why did you have a problem with the espresso and syrup, then?”

Reuben frowns at him. “Are you joking? It’s value for money. They put the syrup in first, you know. You could end up getting less espresso.”

Felix blinks at him. “Huh,” he mumbles and seems genuinely surprised. “But they put chocolate into the mocha, don’t they?”

“Yeah,” Reuben agrees. “But it’s objectively a better drink. Can’t beat the lovechild of a hot chocolate and a latte, can you?”

Felix’s face creases up. “Of course you can. You ever have a pumpkin spiced latte?”

Reuben’s mouth creases up in response. “I like sweet,” he says. “But not _that_ sweet.”

Felix laughs. “So a sweet tooth, then, but not a _sweet-sweet_ tooth?”

Reuben leans forward in his chair. “Exactly! Honestly, mochas are usually too sweet for me, but they make brilliant coffee in here so I figured it’d balance out. And anyway, I think-” A thought strikes him mid-sentence, and he eyes Felix. “Hey, actually…”

Felix, visibly amused, smiles widely. “What? What’re you about to ask and is it silly?”

Reuben laughs. “No, no! It’s very important. How many sugars do you take in your instant coffee?”

Felix makes a face. “Instant coffee is _bad._”

“Yeah, obviously, that’s why you put sugar in it.”

It’s Felix’s turn to eye him. “Why would you even try and _salvage_ something so horrendous?” And then, before Reuben can answer, “Oh, oh, though, here’s a question. Brown or white sugar? Or sweetener? If you _really_ want to spice things up, are you a honey guy or like, an agave syrup guy?”

Blinking, Reuben takes a second to process that. “White? Never sweetener, though, sweetener is _awful_ for me. And I’ve never had agave syrup, so I guess… honey?”

“Mm,” Felix mumbles, nodding in approval, “All extremely adequate answers, you’ll be pleased to hear. No deal-breakers so far.”

“Oh, I’m glad to hear it!” Reuben laughs. “What is this, a reality TV show? Are you gonna vote me off?”

“Never,” Felix says immediately, and then pauses. “Wait, though, you’ve never had agave syrup?”

“Nope,” Reuben replies, “Should I have?”

Felix seems slightly stumped by that. “Well, it’s not a _requirement. _I just thought- you know, you live in London full time. It’s a trendy place. You’ve never lived with a vegan before?”

Reuben smiles. “Maybe? Maybe at uni? I’m not sure. I’m guessing you’ve lived with a vegan, then?”

“Oh, I- I think in Berlin? It’s very vegan-friendly over there, lots of places to eat, and Sophie, she was always bringing shit back to the house, so I probably- but then, I don’t know if you could count that as living with a vegan? I was sofa surfing and I was only there for a few weeks and…” He trails off, and frowns. “Is this boring? I feel like this is boring.”

Reuben raises an eyebrow. “Your adventurous travels across Europe are _boring?_ God, you’re gonna think I’m so _beige._”

Felix grins. “Hey, if you feel beige now, you definitely will after meeting my partners. Especially María. They’re the _opposite_ of beige.”

Reuben frowns. “You weren’t meant to agree that I was beige, you know.”

Laughing, Felix reaches out an arm and suddenly Reuben is aware that the barista is handing them their drinks, smiling. “Thank you, thank you,” he says, accepting the drinks. He places the mocha in front of Reuben and makes a noncommital noise. “Listen, Reuben, I don’t _know_ you that well yet. You could be the beige-est man alive for all I know!”

“Ah,” he says, biting back a smile. The romantic side of his brain is making noises again, so he squashes it down and spreads his legs out under the table, “See, somehow I get the feeling that if I was _that_ beige, we wouldn’t be on a date right now.”

“Oh,” Felix darts back. “It’s a date now, is it? I see, I see, I shall be in my, uh. My _best _behaviour.”

And that’s when Felix’s feet start to edge up Reuben’s leg.

He raises his eyebrows, and Felix raises his right back.

“Right now?” Reuben snorts, taking a (slightly shaky) sip of his drink. It’s way too hot still, but he’d do possibly _anything_ to avoid the giddy smile from spreading across his face.

“No! No, no no no no, of course not now!” Felix splutters.

His foot quietly creeps up Reuben’s leg. Felix very deliberately glances off to the side, whole body turned away as the sharp point of the heel tracks its way over Reuben’s jeans.

Weirdly, it’s that moment that Reuben’s brain informs him that he actually felt really rather underdressed. Here Felix was, nice boots (_heels_, his brain yells) and nice trousers, nice shirt and hair immaculately pushed away from his face. It is that moment, too, that Reuben looks down at himself, unable to remember what clothes he’d pulled on this morning.

He’s looking down to check what clothes his wearing. He’s looking down to- to- to check, whether he was, uh, wearing- okay-enough clothes, and he looks down-

He looks down and there’s the _heels_ again. The long legs and pointed toes. And of course they were pointed, man was wearing _heels_, and they are at his knee now, and if Felix wants to go any higher he’s going to have to shift in his chair-

The foot stops. Glancing upwards, Reuben is greeted by Felix’s grinning face, propped up by a hand and an elbow leant on the table. “Hey, Reuben,” Felix says, matter-of-fact. “You alright?”

Reuben bites at his bottom lip, just briefly, and then shrugs his shoulders. “Oh, you know, mate. Been better, been worse! I’m alright, yeah. You alright?”

Felix smiles widely. It’s like looking into a lecherous sunbeam. “Oh, yeah, not to worry, Reubs. I’m alright.”

And then, in a swift motion that Reuben can’t see, and he can’t even imagine _how_ Felix does this, because his legs were bendy, sure, and Felix’s legs were _long_ and bendy, sure, but _that_ bendy?

In a swift motion that Reuben can’t see, and can’t comprehend, and cannot begin to _fathom_ being that it is roughly 2pm in a public cafe with a nice barista, there is a rush of adrenaline and some fuckin’ brain chemical, some great big something that collapses in his mind, some huge system inside of his neurochemistry that says, Jesus fucking _Christ-_

In a swift motion, Felix gently presses the base of his shoe into Reuben’s crotch.

If he’d made a noise, it would’ve been unholy. Instead, there’s a sharp intake of breath that he hears rattling through his ears rather than feels in his chest, and he bites the _shit_ out of his lips, and growls out: “That’s quite enough.”

Felix makes a noise in the back of his throat. He whips his shoe back and it clacks down onto the floor. “Ah,” he mumbles, under his breath, “S-sorry.” Reuben doesn’t hear him over the sound of his own breathing.

When the haze clears a little, and Reuben has finished reminding himself that they are _definitely_ in a public place, he blinks.

“Well, then,” he coughs, grins widely, and leans over the table. “We said- dates- what did we say?”

Felix looks nonplussed, and opens his mouth, then closes it again. No sound comes out.

(For a split second, the only noise for Reuben is the whirr of the coffee machine behind him. He can’t even hear his own breath.)

Rueben pauses a moment and absorbs the fact that Felix was speechless. Then he processes the question he’d actually asked, rubs his hand at the back of his head. “Sorry,” he laughs, awkwardly. “That wasn’t a good question. Can- Can I try again?”

Felix splutters back into action, and he laughs. “Sure, would you like me to-”

“No, no!” Reuben laughs. “No! I was _trying _to ask how many dates we said we needed before we, uh…” He trails off.

Felix takes a gulp of his drink. Reuben sips his too, and it’s finally cool enough to actually drink, so he takes a gulp. Putting the mug back onto the table, he frowns: Felix was stifling a laugh.

“What’s funny?”

“_Well,_ the first thing is that you’ve got chocolate literally all over your mouth.”

Reuben grins at him, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. “And the second thing?”

“I dunno, man,” he says, smiling widely. He rotates his body in the chair and sticks an elbow over the back of it. It really shows off his goddamn ridiculous 50 feet legs. “I think it was just that- it was just that you couldn’t actually say the word sex? When you were asking… I think you were asking about how many dates we said we’d have before we fuck?”

“What?!” Reuben says, indignantly. Despite himself, there’s a smile written all over his face. “It was simply because I couldn’t find the words-”

“Uh-huh,” agrees Felix. “Mmm. Yes. That’s definitely what it sounded like,” and he reclines as far as his position will allow him, one hand on his face and the other still slung over the back of the chair.

When Reuben opens and closes his mouth, failing to speak, Felix just shrugs.

Fuckin’-

“Okay, fine.” Reuben mumbles, and leans forward. He gestures for Felix to do the same, making little beckoning gestures with his fingers, and feels _thoroughly_ warm when Felix actually does it. “How about-” Reuben starts, and can’t quite manage it.

Felix laughs, and starts to lean back, but Reuben grabs at his wrist, because he absolutely will _not_ be saying it at a volume where other people could hear, and Felix seems pretty pliable in his grip.

A warm shudder collapses through his insides at the thought.

“Okay, _okay._” Reuben says, clearly this time. “How about- How about this, Felix,” And Felix leans in closer and their faces are almost touching and he could shift an inch and they’d be kissing-

“How about this? I bring you home to my shitty two bed flat that I share with our dear mutual friend Judith, and I fuck you so hard you’ll see stars?” (Felix blinks, and his breath hitches. It doesn’t go unnoticed.) “How about,” Reuben says, and feels it hot on his lips, “How about I bring you home and then I fuck you so hard that you don’t know anyone’s name but mine? How about I tie you-” he blinks, and suddenly the heat is gone.

“Wait, wait,” he cuts over himself. “Wait, can we- kink negotiations first, yeah?”

Felix Hadaly looks at him with eyes that may as well have stars in, and says, “_um.”_

Reuben laughs. Huh.

Still sexy then, he thinks. Well done Reuben, he congratulates himself. Well done, Reuben, you’ve only gone and fuckin’ done it-

Felix says, “_Um,_” again, louder this time, with a smile strewn across his face, and a laugh bubbles from inside Reuben’s tummy.

“How about I just assume that we’ll do kink negotiations when you’ve remembered how to say words?”

Felix nods seriously, and the absolute deadpan nature of it, the stone cold clarity, makes Reuben cackle again.

“Oh, and- yeah we said second date, right?”

And Felix, god bless him, Felix’s grin is brighter than the sun. It’s brighter than any star in any sky, and god damn, he nods, and Reuben thinks _jesus fuck._

“Yeah,” says Felix, and Reuben thinks that this might actually work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> taking fic requests over on my Tumblr, [here.](https://verulamfic.tumblr.com)

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on twitter and tumblr @verulamfic!


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